James Gunn? Nope, not here.

This all started yesterday. There were two events that got me there. The first was Colin Jost making a reference to the Man of Steal, this of course made me wonder how much Scarlett Johansson has howling with laughter on the sofa watching Colin say things Michael Che was feeding him, with the Halloween event making Colin burst out “You’re evil” being an absolute number one. The second one was something I had heard before, somehow it got back into my mindset. “Which Superheroes could be black?” It was a questions I had heard around the relaunch of the Fantastic Four. I am a traditional kind of guy, I feel uneasy watching any hero switch race. This does work both ways. As such Lucas Cage could never be caucasian, neither could Cloak from cloak and dagger. It might be me, it might be to keep things how the cartoonist designed them to be. Yet, the question remains valid. As such my mind started to ponder. And in light of the animated series I think that the Green Lantern could be black, then two more ‘heroes’ entered the frame. The first one was Ghost Rider, the second one was a lot darker and based on what some would regard a farce. You see Blacula was a weird setting and I never saw it in the cinema, I saw it much later. Yet consider two creatures with links to the occult. Which reminded me of a print I saw decades ago. A Nazi high table that was investigating the occult. What if there was a story where these (however members there were) and we reconsidered the first Indiana Jones, as well as other supernatural items and we have two movies with links to each other, but not overlapping (in the beginning). The Ghost Rider we need to drop because it is not DC, but we still have Green Lantern, Deadman and optionally Blacula. Yet, now Blacula is not some joke. How about we make that vampire dark, I mean really dark so that we consider the House on haunted Hill a weak comedy. The darkest of dark with a matching storyline. This line will not appeal to all, I get that, but a movie that appeals to all will in the end be praised by no-one. And as the story unfolds and we see more of these very dark pages we introduce a horror group into the DC fold, and I am no James Gunn, as such I am entertaining the utterly bizarre. We see in the the comics that Yellow is the Kryptonite of the Green Lantern, as such sulphur would equally do and we could get a link to the realm of Mephistopheles (he sends his regards). A set of movies that are separate enough and only in the fifth movie we start seeing connections with the stage that the fifth is less watchable unless you saw at least one of the previous four. We lose out on Constantine and Ghost Rider as Marvel was ahead of its time, but there are other avenues to tap into and even DC has its rankings and not all are of the occult (and need not be), but what happens when Green Lantern, Blacula and Deadman connect? There are all kinds of issues and all kinds of twists that could make a good storyline. The story wasn’t too bad and the idea of a African prince Mamuwalde in modern times where we still have human trafficking and slave trade could make for an interesting twist, that is beside the stage that African Shaman magic has never been explored to the degree it could have which gives us more than merely the supernatural. The nice side here is that with the ancient African sides optional sides to Egypt and Mesopotamia open up. The same could be said for the other choices in other directions. All venues that Marvel never touched on and even as they have their own stallions in the stable, there is nothing against having another stable that make a black stable look mediocre bland. This is possible, remember Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in no country for old man? Setting the stage of evil is merely a stage that makes the person darker the more we believe it is closer to reality. If that wasn’t true we would merely giggle at the side of Hannibal the Cannibal, but we do not, even as we realise that it is mostly the actor giving it live and we have plenty of non caucasian great actors (including Asians here). So consider a massively dark role and now we get a person like Jamie Foxx to put on the vampire shroud. How dark can the story become? As an alternative we could consider Chiwetel Ejiofor or Idris Elba both great actors in their own way, as such they will give a different spin to the character, optionally really great spins. As such it is clear that I am no James Gunn, I never intended to be a copy of him, but I reckon that I see the potential of great DC heroes or anti heroes and they could all be black, as such the question “Which Superheroes could be black” is answered, I still have some ‘conservative’ feels about it, as such my imagination doesn’t take me to the Man of Steal (sorry Michael Che), but there are plenty of options in the DC Universe and dare I say the Marvel Universe as well.

Enjoy the day, Monday is almost here.